About
This is a blog about books, written by two friends living in New York and London.
We write very short reviews of books that either of us has read, and we give books a score of between 1 (the lowest possible score) and 10 (the best possible score). Very few books get below 5 or above 9.5.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Why is this blog named NYLONbooks?
A: Although it is not precisely clear, some suggest that the fabric ‘nylon’ was given its name due to the fact that the two cities in which the product was researched and developed were New York and London.* Like the fabric, the authors of this website are based in New York and London.
* It is not clear whether or not that particular story is actually true, but regardless is a cute story.
Q: Why do you blog anonymously?
A: Good question. I can’t say we’re entirely sure of the answer. We just thought that it would be best.
Q: Can you tell us about yourselves?
A: Yes. See here.
Q: You didn’t tell us very much about yourselves. Can you tell us more?
A: Nope, sorry.
Q: How did you two meet?
A: We met at the University of Pennsylvania.
Q: How do you pick which book to read next?
A:
NY: I pick from a number of different sources. First, there are many classics that I haven’t read. Second, I like to read books that have won prizes, such as a Booker, Pulitzer, National Book Award, PEN / Faulkner, Hemingway Foundation / PEN, Nobel, etc., and I also look at books that have been shortlisted / longlisted for such prizes. Third, I read a number of book review sections in newspapers and magazines that are good at alerting me to interesting books that are around. Finally, I also read things that friends or family recommend, but I must admit that I find few books to read in this way.
Lon: I read a lot of classics. I also read books that win prizes, such as the Booker, the Nobel, the Prix Goncourt, the Premio Strega, and so on. The New York Review of Books is another primary source of great reading tips. I try to make myself more at home in the country I am living in – it used to be Belgium and is now the UK -by reading its best authors, both contemporary and classic. I also try to keep an eye on what is written in Italy, my native country. Finally, I am as lucky as to have two people whose reading advice I fully trust.
Q: If you both read so much and are so smart then why are your reviews sometimes written with such poor grammar?
A: Thanks for your concern. When we started writing reviews in December 2006 it was not with the idea of putting them online for the public, but it was only to stick into the front cover to use as a reminder of what was or was not so enjoyable about the book. As such, some of the reviews are really just a couple of notes and are barely in sentence form. When we had the idea of putting the reviews online, we started to take a bit more care in what we wrote, but also felt that it was disingenuous to go back and rewrite the previous reviews however many months or years after we had finished reading the book. Also, note that sometimes what appears to be a spelling mistake is actually just the British spelling.
Q: Why do so many of your reviews have high rankings?
A: We normally give high marks to the books we have read because we picked them based on what we thought would be interesting and enjoyable. We obviously don’t read books that we don’t anticipate enjoying.
Q: Don’t you think that it’s brash to give scores to something as subjective as literature?
A: Yes, we do think that.
Q: Then why do you do it?
A: We do it because it’s our blog, and that’s what we like to do. Also, we don’t like reading book reviews and then at the end not knowing whether the reviewer actually thought that it is worth spending the time and money reading the book.
Q: What kind of insights can you possibly give us by writing such short reviews?
A: You might be surprised. We can point out what we feel at the strengths and weaknesses of the book, if we think that the plot holds together well and whether the characters are well developed. We can also consider whether or not we think that others would enjoy the book.
Q: Why don’t you just write full length reviews?
A: There are a few reasons. First, it takes a lot of time to write a decent book review, and we don’t always have a lot of time. Second, it often requires a great deal of knowledge beyond the actual pages of the book to see how the author has been influenced by other writers, the relationship of the book to other works by the same author, etc., and we don’t think that we’re in the best position to make those connections. Third, there is no shortage of publications, both hardcopy and online, that write such book reviews.
Q: Do you ever read the same book at the same time?
A: Perhaps, but if it happens it is coincidental.
Q: Your first posts date back to December 2006. I’ve been reading book blogs for a long time, and I’ve never seen yours before.
A: Well that isn’t really a question, but if you’re asking why you haven’t seen this site until now it is because many of our posts were backdated. We didn’t start this blog until we had around 40 reviews to upload.
Q: Has anyone ever told you that you have messy handwriting?
A: Yes. That’s why we transcribe our reviews into text, rather than just post the images.
Q: What about the books that you read from before you started posting reviews? Why don’t you tell us what you thought of them?
A: We thought that writing a review however many years after reading a book was not a good way to review a book, and we were also concerned that it would be disingenuous to go back and write reviews of books that have improved or been diminished by our memory and by time.
Q: Has anyone ever really asked these questions, or did you just make them all up after thinking that these would be frequently asked questions, if anyone were to actually ask questions?
A: We made them all up.
